… from the Neolithic to the coming of the Romans
"Bloodshed and warfare are all too familiar to us today. We think of wars fought by armies and nations, of conquests and invasions, of weapons of mass destruction. But the origins of war and the devastating effects that accompany it have deep roots that stretch back into prehistory. A new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, entitled Scotland's First Warriors, draws on archaeological evidence from Scotland to explore the nature of early conflict and violence from the Neolithic to the Roman Iron Age. This evidence is highly variable, represented at different times by numerous bladed weapons, fortifications scattered across the landscape, and the remains of people who suffered traumatic injuries.
Scotland's First Warriors takes a broadly chronological approach, focusing on each period in turn, though with a strong emphasis on developments during the Bronze Age, notably the invention of the first specialised weapons. The exhibition invites visitors to think about the people behind prehistoric conflict, too, rather than imagining it as a straightforward technological development of longer and sharper blades. Conflict and violence did not happen in a vacuum, and their social consequences were wide-ranging and long-lasting. For every sword or spear displayed in a case, there were craftspeople making weapons instead of tools, individuals spending time training instead of farming, and communities whose fate lay in the hands of warriors.
There is mounting evidence for conflict and violence during the Neolithic period in Europe. In Scotland, this is represented by the remains of people buried in chambered tombs who show signs of fatal injuries. Intriguingly, these discoveries are highly localised, being associated with several tombs on Orkney, as well as in Caithness on the northern tip of the Scottish mainland. The numbers of individuals with evidence of fatal or healed wounds are much higher in Orkney than elsewhere, affecting men, women, and children alike. Some preserve the marks of sharp-force trauma from axes or arrows; others have blunt-force trauma, perhaps from maceheads or carved stone balls. These objects were originally conceived for other purposes, such as hunting or tree-felling, but each could be turned to violent means if required. A particularly evocative example is a human vertebra, found in a chambered tomb at Tulloch of Assery, Caithness, which has a flint arrowhead still embedded in it. This person was shot in the spine. Does the arrow reflect a hunting accident? Or was it fired in anger?…"
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Armand
